Mayday! Mayday! Forty years ago today.

The arrival of a new month at Steve Does Comics means it's time for my regular look at what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to exactly 40 years ago.

And, as always, what they were up to was getting into a whole heap of trouble.

It's an all-time classic as Stan Lee and Gil Kane cast aside the strictures of the Comics Code and give us an anti-drugs message to rock the world.

But who cares about that? What really matters is Mary Jane gets to dance and the Green Goblin gets his memory back.

One of my favourite Avengers tales, as the action-packed assemblers brave giant caterpillars and voodoo rites to stop the HP Lovecraft inspired Psyklop from doing whatever it is he's doing - but don't arrive in time to prevent him shrinking the Hulk down to the size of Don't Scare The Hare's viewing figures.

I'm pretty certain I must've read this in the pages of Spider-Man Comics Weekly, which reprinted Captain America tales from this era. But despite that and, despite it featuring everyone's favourite web-head, I have no memory of this tale whatsoever.

My suspicion would be that Cap and the Falcon meet Spider-Man, fight him and then decide to team up with him against a common foe who's not interesting enough to show on the cover.

Conan the Barbarian #5 is the first Conan story I ever read, and the barbarous battler finds himself up against ruthless sorcerer Zukala, and his daughter, the only person on Earth who never turns down the chance to sing along to the old Lulu song, I'm A Tiger.

I've no idea at all what happens in this one but I do know that if I had a gun I wouldn't waste my time setting a bird on someone.

It's deus ex magician as Agatha Harkness weaves her spells to enable Reed Richards to flee the Negative Zone without leading Annihilus back to the Earth.

It's all good dramatic stuff from John Buscema but I'm not quite sure what that look on the Thing's face is about though.

How could anyone not love this tale, as the rascally Leader decides all he has to do to beat the Hulk is make him fight all his foes one after the other?

Needless to say, the plot soon goes wrong for the villain who's as high handed as he is high headed.

Another Iron Man tale I have no recall of ever having read, even though I almost certainly have.

Is that man with the beard that Irish bloke who had the green suit of armour?

Oh yes, I know my Iron Man history.

Odin's still evil. Thor's trying to hit himself on the back of the head with his own hammer, and Karnilla's scrapping with Loki for his helmet. Happy Families it isn't.